Did you join in the #PJMasksToys twitter party ?

Twitter parties are a bit like buses. You won't get one for ages then two will arrive at once ! A couple of weeks ago, you may remember the fun we had at our We're Going On A #BearHunt twitter party so the Madhouse kids were delighted to learn that we would be hosting another one, this time for #PJMasksToys. My only problem as a host is that they always want to invite the same guests - some girl/boy twins from Pierre's class who are absolutely lovely but their mum doesn't want pictures of them online so I always have to be careful with my camera angles.

We received a fab party pack containing all sorts of goodies from the new toy range and we added some snacks and drinks.

We decorated some cupcakes with icing pens to give them funky PJ Masks designs !

We also filled up party bags with sweets, snacks and some of the new PJ Masks Blind Bags. 

 

The pocket money-priced blind bags (RRP £2.49) were extremely popular with the kids. So far, in series 1, there are 12 figures to collect, including a super rare Connor figure. Get ready for a new playground craze - these are going to be big news !

The dress-up range (RRP £24.99) also proved extremely popular and, as a parent, I appreciated how well made it is. You get three separate elements in the box - a full body suit, with velcro fastenings at the back, making it easier for young children to put on and take off all by themselves, an elasticated fabric mask and a fabulous cape with wings that includes elastic loops to put your fingers in for maximum effect when you go flying/flapping around the room. Pierre kept his on all day and even wanted to wear it to bed, arguing that it is PJ Masks so it's pyjamas ! This proves how comfortable it was to wear.

If you haven't got a super funky dressing-up costume, you can still join in the fun with a cut-out mask, which are available to download on the UK Mums TV website - another reason to head over there is their competition to win 1 of 10 PJ Masks costume sets.

The new range also has a plush toy option. All three of the PJ Masks heroes are now available in Beanie Plush form, along with their arch enemy Romeo, with an RRP of £8.99 each. 

They have a really good likeness to their on-screen counterparts and are very soft and huggable.

Finally, there are also vehicle and figure sets (RRP £13.99), featuring Catboy and his Cat-Car, Gekko and his Gekko-Mobile and Owlette and her Owl Glider. Each vehicle comes with its corresponding 3 inch articulated figure but the great thing is, you can fit all three PJ Masks figures inside each vehicle. This is a huge advantage for imaginative play, because all three friends can zoom off together for make-believe adventures.

The range launched at the start of February and in addition to the toys I've mentioned, there is also an exclusive Deluxe Vehicle Set available at Argos. It will also be added to during the year. We loved everything and had great fun at our party.

For more information, you can also check out www.flairplc.co.uk and www.pjmasks.co.uk.

Disclosure : We received a party pack, including the new range of PJ Masks toys.

Madhouse recipe : Broad bean & bacon soup

As you may have spotted on this week's menu plan, I had a bag of broad beans in the freezer and didn't know what to do with them. I decided to make them into soup and headed to google for inspiration. Apparently bacon or mint are both good flavour matches, so they're basically the same as peas. I decided to follow my usual split pea soup recipe but use broad beans instead. It was utterly delicious and very simple to throw together.

Broad bean & bacon soup

ingredients :

500g broad beans (frozen or fresh)

a pack of bacon lardons

2 onions

2 carrots

2 potatoes

1 ham stock cube

optional : dried grilled onions

Gently fry the bacon and onions for 5 minutes, until the bacon is looking fairly well cooked and the onions are going soft but not taking on colour.

Roughly chop the carrots and potatoes and throw those in too. Continue cooking for 5 minutes, tossing to coat everything in the bacon fat.

Throw in the broad beans and stir again.

Cover everything in boiling water and add a ham (or chicken or vegetable) stock cube. Cook for 10-15 minutes until the potatoes, carrots and broad beans are soft when stabbed with a sharp knife.

Use a stick blender to give it all a good whizz. Add a little hot water if the texture is too thick. Sprinkle with dried grilled onions if you like, for extra flavour and texture.

#MySundayphoto #SundaySnap 5/3/17

Spring has sprung ! ... or it's starting to anyway.

Storm Doris (or Thomas as it was called on the continent) woz here !

But somehow the catkins survived, fragile as they are. The wonders of nature !

New Year Resolutions Review week #9 : Marching on !

Wow, into a new month ! This week, the lurgy hit The Madhouse - well, it hit me anyway and totally flattened me for the start of the week. Luckily, I made it through and have come out of the other side, but I didn't achieve much this week.

1. Get Fit(bitting) !

Back to work so my steps were down on the last couple of weeks. I also had a horrible cold/fluey bug at the start of the week which started like a cold (constant runny nose and sneezing) then morphed into a horrible ache-all-over, no energy kind of thing. I slept it off when I could and was very pleased to see that by Thursday, it was on the way out - phew ! This meant that I only hit my 10k step target on two days this week - it really wasn't a priority though as just getting through the day was hard enough !

2. Get cooking bookmarked recipes ! 

Back to work so I'd planned a week of family faves that didn't need recipes. I only made one bookmarked recipe - Cheese Crust Tomato Pie which was transformed into Cheesy Crumb Crust Leek & Bacon Pie, because I didn't fancy the filling made with grated cheese and mayonnaise !

3. Get geocaching !

In last week's round-up, I had placed eight geocaches. I went for a long walk on Saturday and placed my final caches in the series around town, taking my total of "caches placed" up to 13. I need to get back to hunting out some more to get my finds total up now ! You can find out more about my cache-placing adventure here.

4. Get comping !

Hmm my lucky streak seems to have run out. I haven't won anything at all since the first week of February. I'm still on track but I need a new win for March !
(January : 4 wins - £20 shopping voucher, Mr Lee's noodles, Ambrosia trifle glasses, set of 5 books; February : 1 win - prize for Galina )

5. Get reading !

 I finished reading Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran, which looks at the thorny issue of illegal immigrants having their children taken away when they are deported back to Mexico, along with a side helping of the woes of infertility. Click through to read my review. I also read The Song Of The Stork, but I can't post my review yet because I'm taking part in a blog tour. I've just started Dangerous To Know by Anne Buist, which is the sequel to Medea's Curse which I reviewed last year. (Click through for that review.)

6. Get FLYing !

Nope. Sorry Flylady. This is the one that always seems to get neglected !

8. Get bloggy housekeeping !

I think things are on an upward curve. I've had 1,000 unique visits most days for the past couple of days, which is what I used to get, but it had dropped to about half of that since last summer, presumably as a result of the google penalty (which has since been lifted). After my Klout score hitting an all-time low (53.37), it bounced back up to 54.14 last week and is now at 54.64. Still a fair way to get back to my 90 day high of 56.73, but fingers crossed, it's starting to get back into shape too.

9. Get French !

I knew it was too good to be true. Last week, I posted : "It's in the post ! All I can do now is sit back and wait !" Well, I didn't have long to wait. They sent it all back, asking for a load more documents that weren't on the original list to be added to it - the birth, marriage or death certificates for both parents, including details of their parents - plus, obviously, they need to be translated by an official translator again too (bam, another 2 x €38, plus more if I have to order the original certificates from the General Registry Office). They also want a photocopy of Madhouse Daddy's ID card, the last two years' tax returns and phone or utility bills in my name. All things that weren't on the list of required documents. Why they couldn't just keep the dossier and add the extra documents to it is anyone's guess. Maybe it's so that they can say "ahh sorry, some of the documents are more than three months old so they need to be redone". Let's cross that bridge when we come to it though. OK, time to lick my wounds, gather my next load of documents and start round two. *sigh*

What about you? Have you set yourself any targets, challenges or new year's resolutions this year?

Giveaway #613 : Win a 16GB Picture Keeper Connect (RRP £99.99) - closed - winner Deborah Bird

Protecting your memories shouldn’t be difficult. Whether you’re switching to a new phone, running out of storage on your smartphone or wanting to safeguard important photos, Picture Keeper Connect offers simple photo backup solutions for all devices - smartphones, tablets, and computers.

Simply connect it to your device and click to start backup. The app will do the rest! Sick of that “out of storage” message? Backup your old smart phone and easily restore all your photos onto your shiny new device.

PictureKeeper allows you to store all your photos and contacts while on the go, so you never miss out on taking a photo as you have no storage left on your phone. The PictureKeeper application also allows the user to have a picture framed and sent to an address - perfect for that family gift or Mother’s Day.

There are a variety of different capacities available : 16,32,64 GB

The 16 GB version has an RRP of £99.99

I have one 16GB Picture Keeper Connect to give away to one lucky Madhouse Family Reviews reader.  Fill in your entries via the Rafflecopter widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

UK only. Closing date : 17/3/17

T & C's : Entries close at midnight on the closing date. Winners will be selected with a random number generator and announced on facebook and in the giveaway post subject line. Please note, you will be contacted by email and/or twitter and if I haven't heard from you after 28 days, I'll have to pick another winner. Prizes will be sent out by the companies or their PR directly to winners. Madhouse Family Reviews cannot be held responsible for any prizes that go astray !

You may also like to enter my other giveaways :

Giveaway #611 : Win a Champions League Fact File book - closing date 3/3

Giveaway #612 : Win a Fingerlings Baby Monkey - closing date 14/3

Madhouse recipe : Slow Cooker Mexican Ranch Pulled Chicken

Yes, OK, I admit it, it's not a looker - in fact, in this photo, it rather resembles a vat of vomit ! But trust me, it tasted lovely and it was one of those throw-it-all-in-the-slow-cooker-and-let-it-get-on-with-it jobbies that are perfect when you're going to be out all day at work (or in my case, geocaching, as it was the holidays !) but still want to come home to a home cooked meal. 

As always, during the school holidays, I like to have a stocktake in the pantry and clear out anything that's been lurking in there for too long. This time I found a pack of ranch dip seasoning, which is a mix of powdered buttermilk, garlic, chives and herbs. I wanted to do something more exciting than just make a dip with it, and this recipe for Slow Cooker Creamy Taco Ranch Chicken on the Lil' Luna blog was perfect. (Head over and have a look at hers because it looks much prettier than mine !) I actually had a tin of black beans in the cupboard but red kidney beans would be perfectly acceptable too - in fact, I couldn't taste much difference. I also had half a sachet of fajita seasoning which I used in place of taco seasoning.

Slow Cooker Mexican Ranch Pulled Chicken

ingredients :

1kg chicken - the original recipe uses chicken breasts but I used a pack of 6 chicken thighs

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tin of sweetcorn

1 tin of black beans or red kidney beans

2 onions, sliced

1 clove of garlic

1tbsp dry Ranch dressing mix 

1tbsp taco or fajita seasoning or Mexican spice/chilli & cumin

a small pack of Philadelphia cream cheese

salt, pepper to taste

Empty the tins of sweetcorn, beans and tomatoes into the bottom of the slow cooker.

Toss in the minced garlic and onion. (Sorry about the poor lighting - it was 7am and still dark, but I couldn't be bothered to faff about !)

Lay the chicken thighs on top and sprinkle with the ranch dressing mix and fajita seasoning.

Leave to cook for 4 hours or so then remove the chicken thighs and use two forks to shred the meat and remove the bones.

Stir the sauce and season to taste with salt. Add extra ranch and/or Mexican seasoning if you like too.

Return the shredded chicken to the pot.

Plop in the cream cheese.

Leave for ten minutes for the cream cheese to melt then stir to combine everything. Mine came out runnier than the original version because I used chicken thighs that released more juices during the cooking process than breast meat would have.

Serve with rice, pasta or mashed potatoes.

Adding to this month's #KitchenClearout linky as it used up a sachet of ranch mix seasoning and half a pack of fajita seasoning.

What's Cooking at The Madhouse? menu plan 3/3

After a week of revisiting family faves that I can cook without recipes last week, I want something more challenging this week, so it's back to my bookmarked recipes !

Saturday

lunch - time for our traditional Saturday morning trip to McDonald's to ease into the weekend

dinner - I have a bag of broad beans in the freezer - so I'll be making some kind of soup with them - with bacon probably? Or mint? Google will tell me !

Sunday

lunch - roast dinner

dinner - leftover soup or smorging with whatever's in the fridge

Monday 

dinner - homemade deep pan pizza ... sounds simple enough but time will tell !

Tuesday 

dinner -  chicken biryani

Wednesday 

lunch - beefburgers with potato gratin

dinner - veggie pakoras with rice and raita

Thursday 

dinner - I still have a pack of duck breasts in the freezer - after going for Asian flavours last time, this time I want to try duck à l'orange - with mashed potato or is that not posh enough to go with it ?! And a veggie dish or salad

Friday  

dinner - Nepalese potato salad (aaloo ko achar) with salmon

***Click on my Menu Plans tag to see all my other weekly menu plan blogposts.***

Join in with the weekly meal plan bloghop !

Hey DJ, hit that beat and make me eat a chocolatey treat !

Hands up if you're a child of the seventies and you remember Alberto Frog and his Animal Orchestra on Bod ! He had a milkshake dilemma in every episode - would he go for chocolate, banana or strawberry? Well, according to a new report released this week, sounds not only match how we feel, but also our preference for certain flavours, so maybe his Amazing Animal Bands' antics are what made him keep changing his mind about the flavour of milkshake that he wanted !

The pioneering study was commissioned by Cadbury Dairy Milk so it focuses on chocolate rather than milkshake, but it explores the surprising science between mood and music, and how specific sound profiles can impact what we choose to eat. The results have been used to develop a tool that maps music and mind-set to help people decide which Cadbury Dairy Milk flavour they most feel like: a classic or a modern?

The study revealed:

1. Feelings of vibrancy and playfulness are associated with higher pitched sounds, faster tempos, and major keys, which correlate with the sound profiles for Cadbury Dairy Milk Crunchie Bits and Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations Jelly Popping Candy.

2. Feelings of calm and tenderness are linked to music that is slower in tempo, lower in pitch, and harmonically neutral – sounds that match the profiles for Cadbury Dairy Milk and Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel.

3. Feelings of excitement are associated with rhythmic variations which match the profile for Dairy Milk Whole Nut

Inspired by the classic flavours in the range (including Cadbury Dairy Milk, Whole Nut, Fruit & Nut and Caramel) and the more modern flavours (which include Cadbury Dairy Milk Oreo, Cadbury Dairy Milk Crunchie Bits, Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations Jelly Popping Candy and Cadbury Dairy Milk Daim), Cadbury is asking chocolate lovers whether they feel like a ‘classic’ hit or a ‘modern’ hit. To make it even easier to choose, Cadbury Dairy Milk has teamed up with DJ Marvin Humes to host a mixing master class that brings the feeling of the full chocolate range to life – whether it’s a classic flavour like Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel or a modern one, like Cadbury Dairy Milk Oreo.

Guests will be able to create and mix their own piece of music with one-on-one help from Marvin, based on a particular emotional profile. The finished track and its correspondence to one of the eight flavours in the Cadbury Dairy Milk range will then be revealed.

Leading audio branding expert Steve Keller of IV who led the study, comments: “We have all experienced the power of music to evoke emotions, but new research suggests that music has an impact on our sensory perception as well. Crossmodal science has demonstrated that our sense of hearing and taste are so intertwined that music can actually influence our experience of flavour. Few studies, however, have explored how music, emotion and flavour intersect. We’re delighted to team up with Cadbury Dairy Milk to look at this fascinating interplay between our emotions and our senses, literally answering the question: ‘What Cadbury Dairy Milk Flavour do you feel like?’”

Gemma Flanigan, Cadbury Dairy Milk Marketing Manager, comments: “Last year, we made an exciting foray into the world of music, enhancing the taste of the bars in our Cadbury Dairy Milk range with our first ever music album. This year, we’re offering our chocolate fans the chance to create their own music and find out which flavour they’re in the mood for.”

For a chance to win a one to one music masterclass with Marvin Humes, go to SoundOfCadburyDairyMilk-Spotify.co.uk.

Disclosure : Cadbury will be sending me some chocolate - I'll have to experiment with listening to different music and see if it influences which bar I go for !

#KitchenClearout recipe : Sticky Cornflake Tart

As I told you when I shared my Cornflake Cake experiment recipes (and I still really need to try the Mars Bar version !), after finding an out-of-date box of Special K flakes in the back of the cupboard, I went googling for recipes to use them up. I stumbled across a recipe for Cornflake Tart on the LittleStuff blog, in her section on old school dinner recipes. I don't remember eating this at school but it did sound delicious (as did her recipe for school dinner pink custard - remember that ?!) so we gave it a try and ... it didn't even last the afternoon ! It was so popular that I'll be making another one to finish off the box of Special K in fact.

I followed her recipe to the letter, so head on over to her blog to find it. It's great because it uses nothing but store cupboard basics (and I happened to have a very gooey tin of golden syrup that needed using up too !).

Make the pastry.

Use to line a flan tin.

Roll the rolling pin over the top to trim off the excess pastry.

Blind bake with baking beans.

Heat the butter, sugar and golden syrup.

Stir in the cornflakes.

Take the pie crust out of the oven.

Spread with red jam. 

Press the cornflake mix on top and pop back in the oven for five minutes.

Utterly delicious cold or it can also be eaten hot with custard apparently. Huge thanks to LittleStuff for the recipe.

Adding to the #KitchenClearout linky as it used up a jar of jam, a tin of golden syrup and a box of stale cornflakes.